Sky rail: a great day for Melbourne

Opinion

So sky rail is a done deal just two months after we knew it was even an idea, and in two-and-a-half years every level crossing on the Dandenong line will be gone.

What a great day for Melbourne.

An artist's impression of a proposed sky rail station.

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Those nine overworked sets of boom gates have jammed up the roads and crush-loaded the trains on the city's busiest rail line for years.

Until now every plan to remove them has died before it was born, leaving the city's south-east to fester in worsening congestion.

But with contracts signed, the crossings will be gone by late 2018, in the shadow of the next state election.

But more importantly, this is just in time to save the government having to make a terrible choice between putting on more trains and virtually shutting some main roads during peak hour, or letting train overcrowding get so bad some people will be left stranded on platforms.

Progress is hard and sky rail has not been an unambiguous good-news story for the Andrews government. For this it bears much of the blame, having opted not to be up-front with the community about its elevated rail plan until there was no turning back.

The merits of elevated rail versus a more traditional trench remain open to debate.

And a clutch of residents who live near the line will pay a heavy price so the rest of Melbourne's south-east wins; their suburban homes overshadowed by a formidable concrete structure.

They don't deserve to be dismissed as NIMBYs for fighting it - it's what most of us would do.

But as much as sky rail has caused heartache for those closest to it, one of the design's most impressive features is how little pain it will cause tens of thousands of daily train commuters while it is built.

To have just 25 weekdays without trains during construction is a trivial inconvenience compared to the weeks of disruption along the Frankston line this year, where trenches are being dug to remove just three crossings.

Motorists living through 18 months of morning gridlock on the West Gate and Tullamarine freeways right now could also only dream of such a painless transformation of their commute.